Building Literacy

Foundational Skills

Fluency

Spelling

Phonics

What? Word recognition is a critical component in literacy. More...Less

Being able to read a word with accuracy and automaticity is one of the components of fluent reading. In order for students to begin to read steadily, without repeated pauses, they need many encounters with words in a variety of modalities.

When? Word recognition and word decoding should begin as early as kindergarten, once students have the concept of a word and alphabetic principles. More...Less

Reading words around a room and learning developmentally appropriate sight words, high frequency words, words from word families, and familiar patterns in texts, are all opportunities for students to recognize words.

How to teach: Word decoding and word recognition should be taught with explicit and extensive analysis placed on the letter-sound relationships. This type of instruction builds on the phoneme (letter sound) and grapheme (sound spelling) representation of the word, which helps students learn the words.

Play to learn: In Word Search, students search to find their spelling or vocabulary words within a grid of letters. More...Less

When they find a word, students click and drag from the first letter to the last letter of the word. The object of Word Search is for students to locate all of their spelling or vocabulary words within the grid.

Teaching Tip: Children love to play word search games! This traditional word find game can be played online or a printable version can be generated. Word Search is a fun way for students to practice word identification and spelling.